The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

by Russell Hoban

In a not-so-distant future when lions are extinct Jachin-Boaz, a middle-aged mapmaker, leaves home with a wonderful map that was to tell his son where to find everything. The angry son, Boaz-Jachin, goes to the ruins of a palace at Nineveh and performs a series of rituals before the wallcarving of a great lion dying on the spear of an ancient king. Called to life, the lion sets out on the father's tracks and the son follows.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Novels, Magical Realism, American, Literary Fiction, 20th Century

Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Russell Conwell Hoban was an American expatriate writer. His works span many genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magical realism, poetry, and children's books. He lived in London, England, from 1969 until his death. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Father draws for his son a map… A map of the miraculous properties…

He had put aside some money for the boy’s inheritance, but the map was to be the larger part of his legacy. It was to be nothing less than a master map that would show him where to find whatever he might wish to look for, and so would assure him of a proper start in life as a man.

However his son wants a lion… And lions have fallen victim to extinction… One day the father left for parts unknown taking along the map… The son wishes to find him and the map… With the help of sympathetic magic he tries to conjure a lion from the ancient lion-hunt relief…

‘The second spear, the last weapon, the spear of the king, lies under our feet,’ said Boaz-Jachin. ‘We rise up on the turning wheel, alive and strong, undying. There is nothing between us and the king.’

All kinds of fanciful things start happening… His father begins to see a lion waiting for him in the streets… The father, his son and his abandoned wife now walk uncharted roads…

‘I don’t need maps,’ said Jachin-Boaz’s wife. ‘Maps are nothing to me. A map pretends to show you what’s there, but that’s a lie. Nothing’s there unless you make it be there.’

He who lives by the map can find no new ways.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were no lions any more.

So this begins. And soon adds that there were no chariots either.

This is a wonderful, symbolic tale of a father and son, or fathers and sons. I don't universalize the gender because Hoban doesn't; and, indeed, women fare poorly.

The best part of this book, in a literary sense, is when the father, Jachin-Boaz, gets committed to a mental hospital. . . because he sees and is injured by a lion which we all know can not exist. It's funny there, if only because of the doctor who speaks in tick-tock.

But I don't want to talk about the book which I opened forty years ago and then sat on a shelf, then moved to a to-be-read-shelf, then moved to an unlikely-to-be-read-shelf. It lingered there, avoiding a being-sold-for-25 cents-bag en-route to a crappy used bookstore. But then I read Turtle Diary. Still, months passed. Then I read Henry James, and felt the need to escape. I was loading a bag last week for a few days with the grandpups and, I swear, the hands of the reading gods reached out and made me add this book. I can't otherwise explain it.

Just a few pages in, reading about how there were no more lions but how there most certainly was at least one lion, I started to have a little deja vu-ey feeling. I had just taken a tour of some fancy art galleries with an art director and art critic ( Rendez-vous with Art). There was one piece in particular that lingered, that of the Dying Lioness from 660 BC.:



There are more gender-relevant bas relief available. But none capture this torment, this howling.

I would fail a test on what this book is about, but I would not lose the howling. More Hoban, please.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any son who has a father must read this book. Any man who has a son must read this book. Any seer who loves maps must read this book. Anyone confronted by lions must read this book. Anyone who loves and fears the strangeness in humanity must read this book.

[Ben Loory · Rating 5 out of 5]

funny and sad, realistic and supernatural, a fable about fathers and sons and the existence of non-existent things...

'Empty space,' said the driver. 'There's a funny thing to think about. The back of the van is full of empty space. I brought it from my town. But I've opened the doors several times since I left. So is it still empty space from my town or is it now several different new empty spaces? This is the sort of thing one thinks about sometimes. If the back of the van were full of chairs the question wouldn't arise. One assumes that the space between the chairs remains the same all through the trip. Empty space, however, is something else.'

books like this are very rare... books that seem to only have themselves as a model. pretty amazing.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I definitely speak on a bias when I praise Russell Hoban. He is one of my favorite writers and indirectly has been since I was the age of 3. The Mouse and His Child has stuck with me my entirely life and continues to stay as I read it every year and even deemed it necessary to have images of it permantently etched into my skin. But thats beside the fact. Hoban is one of the most gifted, ingenious, and hidden writers of our time, writing some of the most unique and affirming books I've ever read. He is so prolific that he is more known for the hundreds of childrens books he's written rather than the impressive and modest list of stellar novels he's created.

The problem with Hoban is in his complexity. You can't start just anywhere with reading him, and there are probably even places you won't ever want to go with him. Despite many of his novels falling into brilliant obscuirty, there are a handful that are as accessible as any other modern novel but guarentee to be unlike anything you've ever written. Ironically, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Hoban's first novel (aside from The Mouse and His Child, which is technically YA), is probably the best place to start with him. This follows the tale of a mapmaker named Boaz-Jachin who makes a map for his son Jachin-Boaz. The map shows Jachin-Boaz the trails to happiness, paths to wealth, shortcuts and side routes to love, and directions to all the questions he could ever need answered. The ungrateful Jachin-Boaz is unimpressed because it can't show him how to find the most magical and imaginary creature that ever existed: the long extinct Lion. Through a series of self propelled events, both father and son go on seperate journeys, unknowing to each whether they are on the journey to find themselves, each other, or a lion...

This is a great little book that you'll read quick but will stay with you for awhile. Hoban is the master of American Magic-Realism, and a great example of the genre if you are in the dark on anyone else other than Marquez. I really recommend this author and this book. This review is really long.

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not sure how I came to order this book. Then it languished unread on my shelves for years. But this year I decided I should read what I have as much as I can (even before the pandemic). I needed a fantasy including a cat for a challenge. A lion is a cat. The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz is so different from every book I've ever read. I needed to know more. I googled Russell Hoban. I went to the British Museum website to look at Assyrian friezes. I looked up the meanings of Jachin and Boaz. Now I need to let it roll around in my head for awhile.

[George K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Δεν ξέρω τι ακριβώς ήταν αυτό που μόλις διάβασα, πάντως μπορώ να πω ότι μου άρεσε, ότι με έκανε να ξεχαστώ, ότι με πήγε αλλού. Αλληγορικό παραμύθι για ενήλικες, που μιλάει για τις σχέσεις πατέρα και γιου, γιού και πατέρα; Πολύ πιθανόν! Όπως και να ΄χει, το να περιγράψεις τι γίνεται στο παρόν βιβλίο είναι μάλλον δύσκολο, κι εδώ που τα λέμε αχρείαστο και ίσως εις βάρος του βιβλίου: Το καλύτερο είναι να το ξεκινήσεις όντας τελείως ανυποψίαστος. Εγώ έτσι το ξεκίνησα (άλλωστε η ελληνική έκδοση δεν έχει κάποια περίληψη), και μπορώ να πω ότι το ευχαριστήθηκα κιόλας, αν και πιθανότατα θα το απολάμβανα περισσότερο αν ήμουν υπό την επήρεια παραισθησιογόνων ουσιών: Μπορεί έτσι να το καταλάβαινα πλήρως! Τέλος πάντων, ήταν ένα παράξενο και ιδιόρρυθμο μυθιστόρημα, που με κράτησε στην τσίτα από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος. Σίγουρα θα είναι μια από τις πιο ξεχωριστές στιγμές της φετινής αναγνωστικής χρονιάς, έστω κι αν δεν του βάζω πέντε αστεράκια (α, και κάποια στιγμή στο μέλλον θα το ξαναδιαβάσω!). Τέλος, είναι πολύ κρίμα που δεν έχουν μεταφραστεί άλλα έργα του συγγραφέα. Δεν μιλάω για τα παιδικά βιβλία που έχει γράψει (με τα οποία ξεκίνησε την καριέρα του), αλλά για όλα αυτά τα περίεργα πράγματα που έχει γράψει για το ενήλικο κοινό: Όχι μόνο το Riddley Walker που είναι το πιο γνωστό του και πλέον ένα από τα κλασικότερα μετά-αποκαλυπτικά μυθιστορήματα επιστημονικής φαντασίας εκεί έξω, αλλά και για βιβλία όπως το Turtle Diary, το Kleinzeit ή το Pilgermann, που φαίνονται πολύ ενδιαφέροντα και διαφορετικά από τα συνηθισμένα. Αλλά τι να κάνουμε...

[Ensiform · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jachin-Boaz, a Jewish map maker, leaves his wife and son to find “a lion,” though they are extinct. He takes with him the “master map of everything” he was preparing for his son. The son follows after him to London, and his rage becomes a lion that haunts Jachin-Boaz, while he too searches for somewhere and something to be. A mystical, original fantasy, with some gems of phrasing here and there; but I found the book a bit tedious at times. That the tale is a quest for self means that the characters are selfish, so unsympathetic; and the murkier bits of musings on the wheel of time and everything lost being found again, I thought rather cumbersome.

[Daniel Polansky]

A middle-aged cartographer, disappointed with his life and family, flees his village for the city, pursued by his son and an invisible though not imaginary lion representing the vigorous potency of existence and its helplessness in the face of implacable death. I became convinced this month that Russel Hoban is one of the mpre original and underappreciated voices of 20th century literature, and this is exhibit A. Magical realism at its finest, strange and evocative and beautiful. A strange delight, worth savoring.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

4½, so close. Hoban's "Kleinzeit" is one of the best novels I've read in recent memory, but I couldn't even make it all the way through his "Turtle Diary" or the famous "Riddley Walker," so I've not been sure what to make of the man and his books (at least his novels for adults, since he primarily wrote books for children). "Lion" is an early and seemingly forgotten title but it is close to brilliance, much more somber than "Kleinzeit" but just as original. If nothing else, the man was a prose original, which is rare enough.

[Shan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is clearly one of my favorite reads, something that intrigued and amused and delighted me upon first encounter, and then as it lay dormant for several years somehow grew both richer and more complex. Yes it is about searching, yes it about fathers and sons, yes it is a bildungsroman, yes it is something called magical realism, but what makes it special to me is that it is FUN, it is filled with tiny gems ("There were times when it seemed to him that the different parts of him were not all under the same management" is but one example, the car disowning responsibility for whatever may happen is another), and ultimately it is about biting The Wheel that will one day roll over you and over me, and doing the biting with purpose and intensity and full knowledge of the ultimate futility of doing so coupled with the absolute necessity of doing so.

[Darren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Er... not quite sure what to make of this highly stylised allegory about er... - anyway, there was a lot of reference to lions and maps which presumably must've been intended as metaphors for father-son relationship and er... - I did enjoy reading it and it was quite short, so I will re-read it one day and hope I "connect" better to it when in a different mood maybe? 3.5 stars but rounding down now (and maybe up in future!)

[The Idle Woman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel turned out to be a thought-provoking, if somewhat mystifying read: the first half full of poignant comments on belonging, self-direction and the relationship between fathers and sons; the second half verging on hallucinogenic self-indulgence. Realising that it was first published in 1973, I wondered if parts might have made more sense if I’d been smoking something not entirely legal. And yet there’s one irresistible aspect: it’s inspired by the magnificent Lion Hunt reliefs at the British Museum. Hoban’s story takes place in a world both ours and not ours. It has the same relationship with reality as Paolo Coelho’s Alchemist or Gabriel García Márquez’s novels: not exactly fantasy, but solidly within the realm of magical realism. In a Middle Eastern city, near a king’s ancient palace, the mapmaker Jachin-Boaz makes a living by selling dreams to other people. For that’s what maps are: catalogues of alluring possibilities.

Jachin-Boaz has spent twenty years helping others to fulfil their dreams, but he has neglected his own. He lives on the edge of things, with a wife who no longer excites him and a teenage son who shows little interest in the map trade, funnelling all of his passion into creating a master map for that same son. Jachin-Boaz wants to give his son all his wisdom and knowledge of the world, to help him become a better man. But he doesn’t understand that sons don’t necessarily want their fathers to lay everything out for them. They want to make their own maps. And Jachin-Boaz’s son, Boaz-Jachin, one day makes a demand that he believes impossible: he wants his father to tell him where to find a lion...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2018/01/07/t...

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this literary, magic realist (kind of) novel and found it engaging and in some places thought-provoking, although ultimately it felt more like an exercise rather than originating from any meaningful direction, and whilst time spent with it wasn't wasted I'm not totally enthused euther. Still, it was enjoyable enough and that's the most that I'll take from it.

[Hebdomeros · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Petrol stations own the world,’ said Mina. ‘Tanks and towers signal one to the other in strong raw colours. Goats have eyes like oracle stones.’

[Ernest · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had the potential to be 4 or 5 stars. Writing style is pretty captivating. The story also has interesting elements of magical realism, metaphysical themes, strong and peculiar imagery, wise and thought-provoking ideas, and a dynamic plot.

For me, this book, promised an exciting, perhaps magical, adventure at the start, for both the reader and the characters. However, halfway through the book, it felt like the author lost his map for this story. Or maybe, he tried to make various maps lined with overly convoluted paths and destinations, and deliberately layered one map upon another to make one master map.

Many sections gradually became excessively symbolic and ambiguous, and eventually, everything seemed to dissipate into a pool of incoherence. The characters appeared to be under some hallucinatory trance, with objects talking to characters and vice versa; even the logic in the sentences started sounding weird (probably reflecting more philosophical type of writing and reasoning). Further, strange events just happen, and are quickly disposed of before your heart even begins to take a second beat.

The ending was also unsatisfactory. I was not sure what to make of it. There wasn't really any sort of resolution, which is fine; many books do that, and it leaves you questioning and thinking. But with this ending, I don't even have any questions. I'm lost, yet I have no urge nor reason to look for the right path, because my entire world has just turned white, and I'm just sitting in the center of my existence - just existing, oblivious to the changes around me.

Perhaps it was the authors intention to make this book as esoteric as possible. But I personally would like a book to make a little more sense. Maybe if I could find some external explanation about the symbols, imageries and various descriptions utilised by the author, that shows how he purposefully weaves all the different elements together, fitting them into well-planned points of the story to make them work as a whole - then perhaps, my reading experience would be more satisfying.

Overall, although quite interesting in content, I dont think I would really recommend this book to anyone just because I feel like this is the sort of book where you can expend many hours trying to decipher the mysterious and strange parts, but remain unlikely to gain more clarity. One would just have to read the book as it is, and be ready for images to flicker and swiftly disappear before their eyes. If you, however, seek this specific type of reading experience, then this book will be for you.

Finally, I would still be interested in reading other books by Hoban as he seems to be a writer with a unique style and perspective.




One of my favourite quotes from this book:

"From an empty space the future. If there's no empty space where can one put the future? It all figures if you take the time to think it out"

This reminds me that "feeling empty" isn't always a negative thing. Sometimes, we need these empty spaces as they grant us the opportunity to fill new and better things into our lives.

[Bbrown · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz starts out in the style of a fairy tale or myth, which tends to irk me: real fairy tales and myths are stories worn smooth by a hundred thousand retellings over the course of centuries, which is why they strike you as so primordial. Attempts to copy that feeling usually feel cheap and unearned. Luckily, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz turns into something more interesting before its end.

The book gives us two main tales, one focusing on a father and the other focusing on his son, both struggling to figure out what they want out of life. The two tales share symbols, with lions and wheels abounding in the largely physical journey of the son and the largely mental journey of the father. The tale of the son was fine, if unoriginal, a coming of age story where a young man strikes out into the world on his own and likewise is introduced to sexual experiences along the way. It reminded me of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee, right down to the young man playing a musical instrument for room and board as he travelled, though Lee's story taken from his actual life is far better than this book's fictional version. The father's tale holds up much better, refusing to fall into the standard clichés of a mid-life crisis story even as the father abandons his family and takes a much younger blonde lover. He feels some guilt about his actions (which, in an interesting way, manifest physically) but this isn't a story of a man realizing what he had before and returning to it. There are no platitudes so tired and boring here. Even when the manifested specter of his past appears in the form of a lion which most people cannot see, the book avoids the usual boring practice of relegating the lion to the status of a simple hallucination. Instead, the lion is capable of physical destruction, which makes the situation much more tense and interesting to both the father and the other characters involved.

This short book even manages to develop some other characters as well in just a few pages, like the abandoned wife who you can tell is going to make the same mistakes all over again, or the fishing boat captain that maligns restaurant owners while clearly wanting to be one himself. Hoban's writing worked in general, but unfortunately his setting descriptions sometimes failed to land. I bet it will completely work for some people, but that wasn't the case with me. This is one of those books that I rate 3 stars but which I think is very interesting. Unfortunately, with a beginning written in an off-putting style, writing that failed to floor me, and only one of the two main story lines being a stand-out I can't categorize this as a very good or great book, but it has its moments and, overall, is still well worth your time.

[Owen Curtsinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard for me to compare this book to anything I've read before, which automatically earns it some uniqueness points. It hints at sci-fi/fantasy, but the only fantastical elements to the story are the extinction of lions (which may not be all that far off in reality) and the fact that maps in Hoban's world are far more revealing and magical than our world's paper maps. The story is told with the soft focus of allegory that is void of place names (ironic in a book about maps?) and slight on detail but heavy on thematic elements.

Those big thematic elements seem to revolve around fatherhood, identity, and male virility vs. impotence. The importance of the themes, the message of Hoban's allegorical tale, and the richness of the world he created get pretty muddled and lost throughout the book because of the schizophrenic and dreamlike narration. There seems to be too much to digest, and it's crammed into a blurry story that's somehow about lions and sex and fatherhood all at once. On top of that, it's been relegated to live with its contemporary pulp of seventies sci-fi paperbacks.

Through all that, it's still quite the head trip, and a joy to read. Hoban writes about maps in such an enchanting way that I started thinking about my own personal maps and how I could play with them. And as I wrote above, I've never really read anything quite like it (maybe In Watermelon Sugar and I am the Cheese and yes, The Alchemist all jumbled together?), so cheers for that. It's good to know that Hoban was not a one-trick pony, although Bread and Jam for Frances will always be great.

Also, RIP.

[Nika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad and funny
Irrealististic world with a lot of metaphors that bind you to this story about travelling, searching yourself and finding.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jachin-Boaz traded in maps…That had been his father’s trade, and the walls of the shop that had been his father’s were hung with glazed blue oceans, green swamps and grasslands, brown and orange mountains delicately shaded. Maps of towns and plains he sold, and other maps made to order. He would sell a young man a map that showed where a particular girl might be found at different hours of the day. He sold husband maps and wife maps. He sold maps to poets that showed where thoughts of power and clarity had come to other poets. He sold well-digging maps. He sold vision-and-miracle maps to holy men, sickness-and-accident maps to physicians, money-and-jewel maps to thieves, and thief maps to the police.

What a beautiful and strange fable for grown-ups. Hoban, an illustrator and children's writer (probably best known for Bread and Jam for Frances), wrote a number of unique books that blur boundaries between fantasy, sci-fi, environmental writing, and magical realism. This is a tale of a world much like our own, but in which lions have become extinct, and of a father and son who both experience crises - mid-life for the father, and a subsequent crisis of abandonment for the son - and set out on separate searches for a mythical lion. (The names Jachin and Boaz repeat each generation in a different order. They refer of course to the pillars in front of Solomon's temple, but other than that the meaning here is a bit obscure.) The father take up with a mistress; the son is propositioned by a truck driver. Both seek the mysterious lion, found only in ancient and obscure maps.

Partly this is a story about fathers and sons, about men finding themselves - it reminded me a little of Robert Bly's Iron John and New Agey "mythopoetic" men's lib movement. The women here are treated shabbily - put-upon mothers and housewives, or docile lovers - and at the end they get a chance to complain about this.

That the characters are Jewish is often hinted. For example, Jachin-Boaz speaks "his own language", which I thought might be Yiddish, the language of Hoban's parents (although it could also be an invention in the story's world). Another case:

Jachin-Boaz’s wife’s father had been a grocer in the town who owned a place in the desert that he wanted to make green with trees and orange groves. For years he impoverished his family by sending money to the desert place. It was not yet green when he took his wife and children there and died. They came back to the town.

Palestine? Occasionally it is stated very bluntly, as when Jachin-Boaz meets his much younger, blonde (presumably German or Polish) mistress Gretel:

It isn’t that I don’t want to marry you, he said. It would kill my mother if I married a girl who wasn’t Jewish. Right. Here’s another one. Perhaps we could have lunch one day soon. Yes, let’s have lunch. My people killed six million of you.

And later:

They spoke of the places they had come from. Gretel’s town was only a few miles away from a famous camp where thousands of Jachin-Boaz’s people had died in gas chambers and had risen in smoke from the chimneys of crematoria.

Anyway, this is all tangential. This is a book about a tawny lion, a majestic and possibly imaginary being; a manifestation of some ancient vanished power too strange and wonderful to be grasped by a society that has grown up and forgotten what it is to be a child.

[Marc Sebastian Head · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Russell Hoban. I don't know how he does it.

My rationing of his works continues: this is now the fourth I have read, with a few classics still held in reserve, including his best known, Riddley Walker. I have enjoyed or loved every one I've read so far, this included.

And yet, if you asked me what it's about, I would struggle to explain. I was not confused while reading, but am unable to really reduce it into logical words. To do so would somehow diminish it, impose definitions and restrictions that are not really there. It is as though Hoban writes novels that my heart understands, independently from my brain. I understand, I feel, exactly what is going on...until you ask me to think about it.

In this book we have a few recurring themes and images: fathers and sons, maps, the lion, the wheel. And they represent so many things all at once. Time, and the infinity of a single moment. The cyclical pattern of generations, behaviours, names. Rage, justice, the singular spark of human life, each the same, each different, each grasping at the relentless wheel in its turn. The wheel being fate, time, and somehow both life and death, unattainable and unavoidable. People seeking, people finding, things lost and found, all at once.

I don't know. Once again the novel is so slight, so gentle, and yet I feel dazed. Reality unravels so delicately as you read, you are beguiled. It feels so real and right, even when it is nonsensical. I love it.

[Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having had a number of less than pleasant reading experiences over the past two weeks or so, I gave myself permission to only read books that I was pretty sure I would enjoy (for a few weeks anyway). This was my first such indulgence.

I read this slowly, with no more than a few chapters each morning before the start of the day, and I highly recommend that regimen to other potential readers of this book. It enhances the book’s fable-like qualities, and leaves one more receptive to the poetry in Hoban’s short but heavy sentences.

Hoban’s characters seem to me to be shamans in a world that has forgotten the word “shaman.” The world is alive with words. Everything can speak in this novel, and that speech is never static or mundane - the world itself is a bustling profusion of poetry, philosophy and mysticism.

Compared to other novelists I’ve read, Hoban offers something that no other writer can: where other novelists would be content to merely parade symbols or employ plot-points in the interest of constructing a well-built story, Hoban finds literature, in the deepest sense of the word.

[Boaz Rees · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, my namesake novel, how I wish you were more refined.

To compare this novel to something you would have to say it was as if a surreal Lewis and a less subtle Murakami wrote a book. It is unique. There are gems of ideas and phrases littered throughout and by the end of the novel I realised Hoban's creative prowess. The problem however is that his creativeness is not chipped away at like a diamond in a rock, but rather left as it is. There is an incredible story hidden away within this book but it is flawed in many ways. I think that is why many people love this book so much, because without imperfections things can be boring. Beauty itself lies in imperfections. However, I just found the story and characters slightly lacking. Whilst I liked the biblical allusions littered throughout paired with surreal elements, there was a lack of confluence when it came to the narrative. I did however enjoy the novel and may very well revisit it.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is obscure, symbolic and filled with hidden meanings. Each reader may take from it what they like and leave the rest. It is a parable, a fable where dream and reality coexist. Things speak, imaginary beings guide us, love and death intertwine.

It’s a coming of age story of a boy who unleashes a life through a lion. It’s a coming of youth story of a middle age man who looks for death in the lion.

Time is a wheel. It turns and turns, never stopping. Trying to get out of the cycle leads to madness. Death is in every page of this book. Life is too.

It took me a long time to read it. Sometime the meaning would be clear as day. Sometime a single line would confuse me.

Read it and find in it what you need. All else is for another day, as the wheel turns.

[Glimmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reads Sci-fi, feels fantasy, flows melancholic, comedic and mystery. One time where the synopsis actually doesn't stand for something and take readers' word for it.

Despite how the story might be taken several ways, it's really something special with how it's told. And speaking of mid-life crisis convention. This might be the best take I've seen tackling this theme.

The character discerptions and how somehow, they hire the third person detachment reminded me much of Disco-Elysium use of muses.

Also, there's a huge aspect of theology hidden in the meaning of the father, the son and the lion that I appreciated. Certainly, is a maelstrom of every possible genre. Though, why Jachin and Boaz I'm yet to decipher.

[Paul Geary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a random youthful pick up from the library which was selling it for a lofty 10 pence.

It's sat on my shelf for years and now I finally picked it up and read it.

It's weird, abstract and yet so grounded in the basic human needs.

The main focus is the names of the title and they get the arc which is wild, touching and relatable.

The downside is a few touches, in particular the mother, which feels an after thought.


That being said the sarcasm, humour and poignant touches shine through.

A most enjoyable book.

Plus I bloody love lions.

[David]

Superb.
Reminded me of the Fa-tsang epigraph at the beginning of R. Collins' "Sociology of Philosophies":

"In every hair there are an infinite number of lions, and in addition all the single hairs, together with their infinite number of lions, in turn enter into a single lion. In this way the progression is infinite, like the jewels in the Celestial Lord Indra's net."

[Batu Kaan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I offered the drawings. I burned the drawings. Something went out of me, leaving an empty space in me. Sometimes I feel myself hurrying towards something up ahead. What? I'm a rushing empty space. The father must live so that the father can die. Are you a father? Certainly you're a son. Every man who is alive is a son. Dead men as well are sons. Dead fathers too are sons. No end to it"

[Jazz Woudstra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hoben took me to madness through the means of egotistical self-absorbed characters that make themselves no grander by witnessing the presence of an extinct animal.

Found me with continual irritation, led by the hope of a great unfolding of connecting threads.

Please do understand that this book had some strong effect on me but not one I found (wholly personal) to be enjoyable.

[Brett Glasscock · Rating 5 out of 5]

a small miracle of prose. surreal but grounded. painfully emotional, but never twee or contrived. read it either as a small surrealistic epic, or a painful dissection of father-son relationships.

"'There was a lion,' he said. 'There is a lion. Lion is.'"

"The lion would be waiting. Let him starve, though Jachin-Boaz."